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Dembrandt.

npm version npm downloads license

Extract any website’s design system into design tokens in a few seconds: logo, colors, typography, borders, and more. One command.

Dembrandt Demo

Install

Install globally: npm install -g dembrandt

dembrandt bmw.de

Or use npx without installing: npx dembrandt bmw.de

Requires Node.js 18+

What to expect from extraction?

  • Colors (semantic, palette, CSS variables)
  • Typography (fonts, sizes, weights, sources)
  • Spacing (margin/padding scales)
  • Borders (radius, widths, styles, colors)
  • Shadows
  • Components (buttons, badges, inputs, links)
  • Breakpoints
  • Icons & frameworks

Usage

dembrandt <url>                    # Basic extraction (terminal display only)
dembrandt bmw.de --json-only       # Output raw JSON to terminal (no formatted display, no file save)
dembrandt bmw.de --save-output     # Save JSON to output/bmw.de/YYYY-MM-DDTHH-MM-SS.json
dembrandt bmw.de --dtcg            # Export in W3C Design Tokens (DTCG) format (auto-saves as .tokens.json)
dembrandt bmw.de --dark-mode       # Extract colors from dark mode variant
dembrandt bmw.de --mobile          # Use mobile viewport (390x844, iPhone 12/13/14/15) for responsive analysis
dembrandt bmw.de --slow            # 3x longer timeouts (24s hydration) for JavaScript-heavy sites
dembrandt bmw.de --no-sandbox      # Disable Chromium sandbox (required for Docker/CI)

Default: formatted terminal display only. Use --save-output to persist results as JSON files. Browser automatically retries in visible mode if headless extraction fails.

W3C Design Tokens (DTCG) Format

Use --dtcg to export in the standardized W3C Design Tokens Community Group format:

dembrandt stripe.com --dtcg
# Saves to: output/stripe.com/TIMESTAMP.tokens.json

The DTCG format is an industry-standard JSON schema that can be consumed by design tools and token transformation libraries like Style Dictionary.

Use Cases

  • Brand audits & competitive analysis
  • Design system documentation
  • Reverse engineering brands
  • Multi-site brand consolidation

How It Works

Uses Playwright to render the page, extracts computed styles from the DOM, analyzes color usage and confidence, groups similar typography, detects spacing patterns, and returns actionable design tokens.

Extraction Process

  1. Browser Launch - Launches Chromium with stealth configuration
  2. Anti-Detection - Injects scripts to bypass bot detection
  3. Navigation - Navigates to target URL with retry logic
  4. Hydration - Waits for SPAs to fully load (8s initial + 4s stabilization)
  5. Content Validation - Verifies page content is substantial (>500 chars)
  6. Parallel Extraction - Runs all extractors concurrently for speed
  7. Analysis - Analyzes computed styles, DOM structure, and CSS variables
  8. Scoring - Assigns confidence scores based on context and usage

Color Confidence

  • High — Logo, brand elements, primary buttons
  • Medium — Interactive elements, icons, navigation
  • Low — Generic UI components (filtered from display)
  • Only shows high and medium confidence colors in terminal. Full palette in JSON.

Limitations

  • Dark mode requires --dark-mode flag (not automatically detected)
  • Hover/focus states extracted from CSS (not fully interactive)
  • Canvas/WebGL-rendered sites cannot be analyzed (e.g., Tesla, Apple Vision Pro demos)
  • JavaScript-heavy sites require hydration time (8s initial + 4s stabilization)
  • Some dynamically-loaded content may be missed
  • Default viewport is 1920x1080 (use --mobile for 390x844 iPhone viewport)

Ethics & Legality

Dembrandt extracts publicly available design information (colors, fonts, spacing) from website DOMs for analysis purposes. This falls under fair use in most jurisdictions (USA's DMCA § 1201(f), EU Software Directive 2009/24/EC) when used for competitive analysis, documentation, or learning.

Legal: Analyzing public HTML/CSS is generally legal. Does not bypass protections or violate copyright. Check site ToS before mass extraction.

Ethical: Use for inspiration and analysis, not direct copying. Respect servers (no mass crawling), give credit to sources, be transparent about data origin.

Contributing

Bugs you found? Weird websites that make it cry? Pull requests (even one-liners make me happy)?

Spam me in Issues or PRs. I reply to everything.

Let's keep the light alive together.

@thevangelist


MIT — do whatever you want with it.